September 02, 2007

JFI:Banana

I've come to associate JFI with a celebration of ingredients and recipes - exotic and regular - fit for special occasions and everyday meals. And the more I thought about it, I wanted to feature an ingredient with the same features. And I picked Banana! We use almost every part of banana plant in our meals - raw banana, ripe banana, banana flower, banana stem - in our everyday meals and for special recipes reserved for festivals. And of course, serve food on banana leaves.

Here is a brief history of the origins of banana:

The true origin of Bananas, world's most popular fruit, is found in the region of Malaysia. By way of curious visitors, bananas traveled from there to India where they are mentioned in the Buddhist Pali writings dating back to the 6th century BCE. In his campaign in India in 327 BCE, Alexander the Great relished his first taste of the banana, an usual fruit he saw growing on tall trees. He is even credited with bringing the banana from India to the Western world.

Banana has been mentioned in the Buddhist Pali writings dating back to the 6th century BCE as well as in national epic poems of India. The popular name Banana was given by Arabic slave traders.

So let's celebrate banana and the banana plant this month. To participate in this event:

1. Prepare a dish with banana (green or ripe), flower, stem, or any other part of banana plant, and post it on your blog in the month of September. The choice of recipe is not restricted to Indian cuisine.

2. Please link to this event announcement.

3. Send me your recipe with the name of the recipe, name of your blog, permalink of the post and a picture (400x250) of your blog post to me at ahaarmail@gmail.com. Please include JFI in your subject line.

4. If you are a non blogger, please e-mail me your recipe and picture and I will include it in the roundup.

5. I would have posted the announcement yesterday, but the logo design took me a day! So feel free to use the logo :)

Update: Plantains are starchy, low in sugar variety of bananas which trace their origins to India. The difference between banana and plantain is that plantains have to be cooked before eating. You can also use plantains for this round of JFI.

A sweet, perfect fruit for this event. My time has been so limited these days and I post directly to deal with stuff in my column but I am hoping that in some way, I can work in bananas, perhaps, maybe, so that I can enter the event.

Hello and welcome to Ahaar. We have been cooking and posting recipes for more than 6 years now. I love to hear from you, all your comments and feedback. Please keep it coming. I will also try to answer any questions you have in the comments.